Sink to the Bottom With Me (Or Us)
by A Road Unturning
Summary: They're only together a few months, teetering on a year, but each day is a separate year in itself. Nina/Jin/Forest. Written as an unofficial answer to the 1sentence challenge on LiveJournal.


_Disclaimer – I don't own Tekken._

_These prompts are taken from the 1sentence challenge on LiveJournal, under the theme set "Epsilon." This is an unofficial answer to this challenge. These sentences all take place in a skewed AU in alternative Vertigo!verse, but you don't have to read that to understand this, but it might give you some tasty background information. :D_

_I've been champing at the bit to do something for my favourite OT3, and this gave me a great structure to work with. This is also my first time attempting anything like this, so it was quite a departure. XD_

_Warnings; Mentions of slash and het, threesomes, and implications of intimacy. _

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**Sink to The Bottom With Me (Or Us)**

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**#01 – Motion**

Jin and Nina move in perfect accordance with each other, slick and tireless, and in comparison Forest feels like a bumbling stammer in a well-oiled machine.

**#02 - Cool **

Nina warns Forest to wear extra vests below his uniform, as Jin has a pathological aversion to indoor heating.

**#03 - Young **

They're two decades behind her, but Jin's eyes are old and Forest's far too gentle, and it's a matter of truth that she'd kill them both before they called her an old lady.

**#04 - Last **

Forest is last to join their corporation, their group, their trio, their bed.

**#05 - Wrong **

He doesn't know what's happened to him these past few months, doesn't know what's caused him to slip out of what once was comfortable and common and content and engage so completely with the two people who shackled him here in the first place.

**#06 - Gentle **

Jin leaves bold imprints on the curve of her hip, her stomach, her breasts; Forest's touch is so gentle and so questioning it leaves her frustrated.

**#07 - One **

Sometimes when the night is too dark, when her sister's jibes cut a little close, when her father's ghost tinkers between memories of snow and blood, does she slip from Jin's bed and sits in the shared kitchen until Forest appears, blinking and yawning softly, and makes her a decaf coffee.

**#08 - Thousand **

They lose a thousand men in the latest raid on G-Corporation and as Nina and Jin glance impassively through the file of names, Forest struggles to rid from his head the fact that it equates to one thousand families.

**#09 - King **

Forest knows Jin is King of the World, and by default that Nina is his Queen, so where does that put him in the court of corporate evil?

**#10 - Learn **

One evening Jin quietly requests that Nina teaches him how to handle a gun, and Forest makes a hasty retreat to the kitchen.

**#11 - Blur **

Jin can't fully recall his mother, only scents of chamomile and fresh water, and Forest represses his recollection of his friends and father just to cope with each day, but half of Nina's life has been blurred by the cold clasp of freezing tanks and secretly she keeps the two of _them_ vivid and untouchable in her mind.

**#12 - Wait **

She knows Jin has been watching the kitchen boy slowly over the past months, documenting each move and measure of his life, carefully putting the plan into action, but all Nina can see is a weak kneed daddy's boy but Jin has waited so long and who is she to question her superior?

**#13 - Change **

There is a new heat in their eyes, something raw and incompressible scratching behind their stares, and as touch lingers too long and eyes shift to where they shouldn't be, Forest knows something is about to give and he'll never look at himself the same way again.

**#14 - Command **

Nina suggests, somewhat coolly, that if he wants the boy so badly why doesn't he merely order Forest's compliance as they have him under a devil's contract, but Jin coldly responds that there is no victory in such a thing.

**#15 - Hold **

Nina never requires any reassuring post sex, but Forest stays awake long after the lights have gone down and in the dark Jin lightly ghosts his fingers over Forest's hand until he sleeps.

**#16 - Need **

She doesn't need any of them, not really, but yet again maybe she does, like she needs her sister's vitriol and the memory of her father's blood staining her pinafore; all this heat and noise in her head to prevent the sensation of ice once again closing in and shutting her away completely.

**#17 - Vision **

His first glimpse of Forest was of a smiling boy in yellow, whilst his first glimpse of Nina was dodging bullets as she tried to kill him.

**#18 - Attention **

When Forest returns after spending a few hours with Xiao on his day off, he slips steadfast into the kitchen to make them dinner, but Jin still notes the smudge of lip-gloss on his neck and doesn't return Nina's all too knowing chuckle.

**#19 - Soul **

She was brought up an Irish Catholic, all white stone and golden cross, and even Jin had no choice but to believe in the presence of divine right and devilry, but Forest believes in nothing but humanity and that surprises her.

**#20 - Picture **

When Jin shows her the picture of their newest target, a doe eyed boy with messy hair, she wants to laugh.

**#21 - Fool **

Forest knows where he will be in the court of the corporate evil; the royal Jester, because he is the biggest goddamn fool that ever lived.

**#22 - Mad **

Her and Jin are twinned in their earthbound, cynical insanity because they are the only ones who see the truth of the world, but Forest's personal madness is so bright and burning it threatens to tumble them both into the ground.

**#23 - Child **

Jin is an all too vocal advocate for contraception, but she figures Forest might have one day liked children but that's just tough, because she knows from experience that she'd be a terrible mother.

**#24 - Now **

He can't live in the past, where there are missing mothers and smoking guns, and his future, he knows, is made null by his own hand, so Jin stays in the present for now; wrapped in the warmth of two slumbering bodies.

**#25 - Shadow **

They accompany him everywhere, lingering by his side like shadows, and there are few places Jin chooses to draw strength from beside himself, but he allows this one indulgence.

**#26 - Goodbye **

After Jin orders the demolition of a Spanish city, Forest disappears for three days whilst on duty and Nina drags him back and warns him that such insubordination merits a death sentence, and when met with further resistance, she calmly brings up his own contract and the light vanishes so fast from his eyes she barely has time to feel the prick in her chest.

**#27 - Hide **

They steal away to the far waysides of Japan, back into the forests where he was born, as Nina makes arrangements about faking their deaths.

**#28 - Fortune **

After Jin's fortune cookie promises a long, prosperous life, Jin is silent for the rest of the meal and Nina is careful not to catch Forest's eye from across the table.

**#29 - Safe **

Tangled up in sheets and sweat, Forest is mildly aware that he is wrapped up with the two most dangerous people in the world, and that his heart shouldn't beat out of his chest each time he hears a helicopter overhead.

**#30 - Ghost **

The memory of Jin is a hefty presence between them, and Forest knows that soon they will stop seeing each other altogether.

**#31 - Book **

Nina has a weakness for western adventure, Jin a preference for schoolboy classics, and to Forest that is ultimately perfect because what else is he going to buy for their birthdays?

**#32 - Eye **

Jin observes the soft brown of Forest's eyes, for they are the same shade as his mother's, yet he sometimes struggles to stare at Nina's because they are blue and crystalline and see right through him.

**#33 - Never **

Forest, too caught up in conscience, will never fully join their side and for Nina, it gives her a little hope for the world.

**#34 - Sing **

Nina's accent is only apparent when she sings old Irish folk songs in the shower, and she leaves the door ajar a little so that Jin can listen and Forest can get the hint that she fancies some of her old heritage for dinner.

**#35 - Sudden **

Death is swift, as shocking as a speeding bullet and Forest has one arm slung under an unconscious Nina and there is blood clotting in his hair and clothes, and he's screaming down on the radio for backup.

**#36 - Stop **

Their hands drift over an old war wound and instinctively she winces; only to find all caresses have ceased and she looks up, only to find two pairs of eyes blinking down at her owlishly, and for the rest of the night they handle her like crystal glass.

**#37 - Time **

They're only together a few months, teetering on a year, but each day is a separate year in itself and by the end of it all Forest feels so _old._

**#38 - Wash **

The first time they're intimate, Forest avoids their eyes and showers for an hour each morning and night for a whole week, and even after it's a habit he never breaks.

**#39 - Torn **

It always amuses her how they always manage to rip Forest's clothes, leaving him tousled and dazed, while they remain immaculate.

**#40 - History **

They'll go down in history amongst dictators, power hungry monarchs, conquerors; faces etched down as monuments to monstrosity, and as Forest fixes his tie in the mirror, he knows his likeness will be among them.

**#41 - Power **

When called upon, Forest is a force to be reckoned with, fierce and exact in his physical arts, and it fills Jin with small, self-satisfied pride that it is something they alone can harness.

**#42 - Bother **

Forest always attends to small details, like how Nina prefers kale to cabbage, and how Jin must have his knife and fork perfectly horizontal, and if Nina was another kind of woman she would say it was sweet.

**#43 - God **

Forest never believed in God; only in the God that existed in the good in other people, but Jin Kazama and Nina Williams make him see God in other ways.

**#44 - Wall **

They form barriers around him, closing him tighter and tighter into their brave new world, and Forest would suffocate but Nina shrugs her shoulders and tells him he'll get used to it eventually.

**#45 - Naked **

Forest will always avert his eyes, but Nina's stare is shameless and bold and Jin can't help but smirk, for she's the same in every walk of life.

**#46 - Drive **

When this is over, Forest will just find a car and drive and drive and drive until he stops chasing whatever the hell is chasing _him. _

**#47 - Harm **

Jin never lifts a finger to fight in public, except that one time Nina was shot and Forest was in the firing line, and that one grunt found his head being squeezed like a sponge.

**#48 - Precious **

One stays in the darkness with him, as she is used to lurking in shadow and sadness, and the other is like candlelight; a soft, kind wash on their faces.

**#49 - Hunger **

Jin thinks of warm midday meals and polished nails scratching down his back and of heavy breath on his neck, of hot rooms on cold nights, of silence and sweat and sour sweetness, of _who _and _what _he is doing this for, and most of all _why _and _why_ is he struggling to remember _why _he's doing this, and the hunger reaches such an aching swell inside him he can't take it anymore and he charges at the beast.

**#50 – Believe**

Maybe they would have all come to live together in some small settlement in the mountains, been insane and damaged and defeated together, and for a small while it was something they had been prepared to believe in, but the incoming crash of the world was imminent and Nina thought it had been a nice dream, at least for a while, and then she got back to work.


End file.
